[OSM-talk] Timezones (was: Deleting data)

Markus Lindholm markus.lindholm at gmail.com
Mon Oct 21 20:54:21 UTC 2013


On 21 October 2013 16:41, Toby Murray <toby.murray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Having edited over a thousand of them, I would not be sad to see admin
> boundaries removed from the general OSM database. I think Russ is on to
> something with his "ClosedStreetMap" concept although that is some terrible
> branding so we need another name :) But at the end of the day, we are
> terrible at maintaining such boundaries and very good at breaking them in
> OSM, mostly because they are usually hard/impossible to spot on the ground
> and verify. So people see random lines going through the area they are
> trying to map and either don't pay attention when they touch them or just
> delete them outright. Essentially what we need is the concept of layers. If
> all the admin/timezone boundaries were in their own "layer" and didn't
> interact with roads, rivers, etc in OSM then they would be much easier to
> keep up to date from external sources.
>
> Yes, OSM *can* contain just about anything. But if we are terrible at it and
> there are other datasets available that aren't terrible then why should we
> try to poorly duplicate others efforts?

I think you're overlooking a key strength with the osm database, that
all the map features are integrated, e.g. if a kiosk is mapped to be
three meters to the left of the entrance to the building, and that is
also the ground truth, then you have that fact of their interrelation.
With different datasets from different sources, you lose it.

/Markus



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